‘Zut, alors,’ he said, clapping a hand to his forehead. ‘Never have I heard an expression like zat to describe it.’
Emma answered him in French which made the good doctor’s eyebrows shoot up almost to his hairline. And for the rest of the time Emma was in the surgery they spoke only French. How good it felt, how natural.
Just as Emma was leaving the doctor reverted to English. ‘And is your husband thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father?’
‘My husband,’ Emma said, ‘is dead.’
Best to tell the truth. And who better to tell it to than a doctor who had signed the Hippocratic oath?
‘Ah.’ The doctor steepled his fingers. ‘Posthumous. I’m sorry.’
‘Not at all,’ Emma said. ‘Seth died two and a half years ago now. In Canada. But this …’ Emma placed her hand on the soft bulge of her stomach ‘… isn’t a problem. I will be keeping the child. It’s all I’ve ever wanted – to have a child of my own, and now …’
Emma hadn’t expected to well with tears because she’d rehearsed this speech all the way to the surgery, but now the words were out of her mouth it felt different somehow.
‘Then I will do my utmost to see you are safely delivered of your child.’
And then, in a gesture Emma was certain wasn’t in the Hippocratic oath, the doctor leaned towards her and kissed her on both cheeks in the French fashion. ‘Bonne chance, madame.’
I don’t need luck, Emma thought, as she left the surgery. I feel like the luckiest woman alive.
There were a few loose ends of her life to tie up but when she’d done that, well … life was there for the taking again, she was sure of it.
Fleur wrote often and seemed happily settled. She was enjoying her course. She had plans to come back for a visit in the summer. With Delia.
So that left just two people with whom Emma needed to make her peace.
Stella.
And Matthew.
In that order.
November was drawing to a close. Tom had a bonfire most days now, putting the garden to bed for the winter, so he said. Emma was kept busy making warm winter clothes – dresses and coats – for her clients. She bought a fur hat in Bobby’s in Torquay but so far it hadn’t been cold enough to wear it. Certainly it was nothing like as cold here as it had been back in Canada at this time of year. She hoped Fleur was warm enough, and she sent money often so that she could buy gloves and scarves and warm woollen cardigans should she need them.
She adapted a Butterick pattern for herself, moving the single button of the jacket higher so that the fabric below it fell in neat folds, minimising the visual effect of her bump. Rebecca Bailey had placed an order for three dresses and a coat but while she might have noticed the soft mound of Emma’s baby she didn’t comment on it.
Yes, she was busy but at the back of Emma’s mind was the visit from Stella she knew would come. She’d been dreading it and knew Stella would call on her one day – later if not sooner. Stella’s shrouded wedding dress was still hanging in Emma’s atelier, waiting for her to collect it or tell Emma how she might like it altered for evening wear. Emma knew that Stella was well enough now to continue nursing. She’d told her so in a very short note, letting Emma know she would pay for the dress she’d had made. She’d begun her training to be a sister. And there was the possibility to train as a midwife at a later date.
A midwife? I’ll be in need of the care of one of those soon.
Much had happened these past weeks. Fleur had written and telephoned Emma more than Emma had ever dared hoped she would, but Fleur seemed to be settled and happy and enjoying her course.
Mrs Passmore had bought a car and Emma had taught Tom to drive it. And so now, twice a week, Tom drove Mr Passmore out somewhere. Sometimes they were gone all day – as far as Dartmoor with often lunch at a pub in Princetown to sustain them for the return journey.
All Emma could do now was sit tight, keep well, give some serious consideration to what she was going to tell Fleur about the baby she was carrying.
Keep her head above water, as the saying had it.
December passed slowly, oh so slowly for Emma. And then, almost before she knew it, it was Christmas. Emma spent the day with Ruby and her family in Shingle Cottage and it had seemed almost like old times to Emma to be there, everyone squashed up together in the small space. But somehow it was her time spent there with Matthew Caunter that had been uppermost in her mind.
‘You’re goin’ to ’ave to tell ’im,’ Ruby had said, when Emma had told her about her baby and who the father was, not that Ruby hadn’t guessed. ‘Or someone else will.’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Emma had said.
‘What an’ risk my life at your fair ’ands,’ Ruby had joked.
But Emma had left Ruby’s with the promise she would tell Matthew. It was finding the right time to do it that was the problem. And that time hadn’t presented itself yet.
The ring of the doorbell startled Emma from her thoughts. Matthew? Her heart fluttered at the thought. So far she’d managed to avoid seeing him at his premises in Roundham Road by not driving that way, even though she had to drive the long way around to get to Romer Lodge. She took a deep breath and walked into the hall.
No, not Matthew. It was Stella. She could tell Stella’s tall form, and the slimness of her, through the stained glass of the front door.
‘Oh,’ Stella said as Emma opened the door to let her in.
‘Oh, indeed,’ Emma said. There was no hiding her bump now, and the way it made her waddle a bit when she walked. ‘Come in. If you still want to.’
There was no need to tell Stella that Matthew was the father of her child. She ached to see him. She wished now she’d let her heart rule her head that afternoon in the park in Shiphay when she’d told Matthew she needed time, and he said he had plenty of it. But pride wouldn’t let her go to see him, or telephone him, or answer his telephone calls.
But she had a feeling he was still looking out for her. Sometimes she got that feeling, when she was walking along the promenade taking her daily exercise, or standing in the queue in the Post Office that she was being watched. But when she turned around there was never anyone there that she knew, or anyone looking at her at all in fact. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling – it made her feel safe somehow.
‘I do,’ Stella said.
Emma stepped aside to let her in. ‘Atelier or sitting room?’
If they went into the atelier then Emma would be in control, could make suggestions about how to alter Stella’s wedding dress. But if they went into the sitting room, well … who knew which way the conversation would go?
‘Sitting room, I think,’ Stella answered. ‘Lead the way.’
‘I’m so glad you’re well again,’ Emma said, having to say something. And it was the truth – she was pleased to see Stella looking so well. And to see that Stella had put on a little weight – she was less gaunt than she had been the last time Emma had seen her.
‘I’m fine,’ Stella said. ‘But less about me, more about you. Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Yes. Doctor Grenier. He’s French.’
Stella laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter what nationality he is. Delivering women scream in every language!’
Emma couldn’t help but giggle. ‘That isn’t really boosting my confidence!’
And how easily we seem to be slipping back into our old, yet blossoming, friendship.
‘No,’ Stella said, looking more serious again now. ‘What are you? Six months?’
‘It’s due at the end of May.’
And we don’t need to do the mathematics, do we? We both know Matthew and I made this child together when he was engaged to you and when you were lying close to death.
‘Does Matthew know?’
There. His name had been mentioned and Emma had taken the coward’s way out and let Stella say it.
‘I haven’t told him, no.’
‘But you think someone else might have done?’
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‘I don’t know. Before Fleur went back to Canada he rang almost daily. Fleur always took those calls and every day I refused to speak to him. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forgive him for … for being with me when you were so ill in the hospital.’
‘Forgive him,’ Stella said. ‘I have. That’s not an order, of course.’ Stella laughed easily enough.
Forgive him?
‘I’ve forgiven him, in my heart, for this,’ Emma said, cradling her unborn child in her arms. ‘It’s a dream come true.’
‘Good. Did he leave messages?’
‘Sometimes. He told Fleur that the man with Caroline had been deported, and that Caroline was in custody. I was never far from the telephone and often overheard.
Fleur always gave me a withering look and said, “My mother is indisposed.”’
Stella laughed. ‘Girls that age are good at withering looks,’ she said. ‘Does Fleur know? About the baby, I mean.’
‘Not yet.’ Emma ran the palm of her hand over her bump and the baby stretched at the touch. ‘I don’t know how to tell her.’
‘And does Matthew still telephone you?’
‘Yes. Most days. I think he does it just to make sure I’m here. I have to answer the telephone myself now, of course, and I have to answer it in case it’s a client. Or Fleur. But I always answer it in a disguised voice and if it’s Matthew, then I pretend to be the maid and say “The mistress isn’t in”. I haven’t got a maid.’
‘Then you’re a silly goose,’ Stella said. ‘Not to be without a maid, I don’t mean that, but that you haven’t told Matthew. Although I can’t think for a minute that he doesn’t know. Not after all the surveillance work he did when he was younger.’
‘No,’ Emma said. ‘That thought occurred to me.’
‘Tell me about when you first met Matthew,’ Stella said, her voice gentle and encouraging. ‘Before you went to Canada. Were you lovers then?’
‘No! I was underage when I first became Matthew’s housekeeper. And then, just before I left for Canada with Seth I saw him again. Babies didn’t happen for Seth and me, well …’
Emma knew she ought to be offering Stella tea, or a glass of sherry, or some sort of welcoming drink but instead she told Stella about her time with Matthew – a time that had never left her heart, not really.
‘And it was only the once,’ she finished, wrapping her arms over her growing child. ‘With Matthew. To make him. Or her.’
‘It’s all it takes sometimes,’ Stella said, smiling so benignly at Emma that Emma felt forgiven for stealing Stella’s fiancé away, however unknowingly. ‘But I hope you don’t think I’ve overstepped the mark, asking you such private things?’
‘I’m glad you have. I wanted to tell you but I didn’t know how. I valued the friendship we’d begun and then I went and ruined it.’
‘You haven’t ruined anything. The threads of our friendship might have been frayed a little by what’s happened but they haven’t broken I don’t think. Do you?’
‘No. I’m a seamstress. I’m good at repairing things.’
‘Then put in a stitch or two to repair things with Matthew. And that is an order!’
‘Yes, sister!’ Emma said.
‘Joking apart,’ Stella said, ‘he loves you. I knew in an instant that day in the hospital when you turned up and found him sitting there. His eyes couldn’t leave you.’
There was little emotion showing on Stella’s face and Emma guessed that that was merely the medical professional in her, but that deep down, inside, she had to feel hurt by it all. How could she not?
‘Who else knows?’ Stella asked. ‘Apart from Doctor Grenier, and now me?’
‘My friend, Ruby, knows. And her husband, Tom. I think my neighbour, Mrs Passmore, has guessed but she never comments when she comes for fittings. New clients assume I’ve got a husband around somewhere and I choose not to elaborate. So …’ Emma threw her arms wide and shrugged.
‘So, you’re in a pickle.’
‘I’ve been in worse ones.’
’You don’t have to wear sackcloth and ashes for ever, Emma,’ Stella told her. ‘I don’t hold a grudge against you, or why would I be here?’ Stella held up a hand to indicate she hadn’t finished what she wanted to say. ‘No, don’t answer that. And pickles leave a sour taste in the mouth. Are you understanding me?’
Blimey – I’ve met my match in Stella Martin, haven’t I? And this is a lecture I’ve been needing. I’ve been feeling monumentally sorry for myself, haven’t I?
‘Yes. I will tell Matthew, but not yet.’
‘And I’m going to have to take your word for it?’
‘You are. But I am more grateful to you than you will ever know over this. I’ve been hating myself for what I did to another woman—’
‘Stop! It takes two. I know that with impunity now I’m on my midwifery course.’ Stella said it as a joke but Emma didn’t find it funny. ‘And you wouldn’t have succumbed to what I know are Matthew’s not inconsiderable charms had you known he was engaged to me at the time.’
‘Well, of course I wouldn’t have,’ Emma said.
‘There we are then. You’re absolved of all blame. But if you’ll take my advice, once you’ve finished breastfeeding, you’ll make Matthew do the night shift.’ Again there was jokiness in Stella’s voice and yet it was heartbreaking for Emma to hear it.
‘You’re a saint, you know that,’ Emma said.
‘Not entirely,’ Stella said with a grin. ‘There’s this doctor at the hospital. He—’
‘Don’t tell me!’ Emma said. He was married. She knew it. Probably with a wife who was an invalid or a stewed prune as the saying had it in Devon for a wife who was frigid. But Emma didn’t want to know.
‘He’s probably all the things you’re thinking of him.’ Stella laughed. ‘He’s seen me at my worst. Matthew met him that day when I was taken so ill. But he’s good for me, and I love him, and he loves me … despite everything.’
‘What’s his name?’
Had I asked what your fiancé was called when first we’d met this scenario wouldn’t be happening, would it?
‘Simon Taylor. And I think you’ve guessed it! He’s married. His wife is a Catholic and won’t even think about divorce. But all is not lost. This way, I can remain a nurse, get further qualifications and I’ll be giving and receiving love as I do it. And he wants to take me dancing at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay. So, that dress … lead me to it. It seems a long time since I’ve seen it. I’m thinking perhaps you could alter it into something for me to do the Charleston in. A bit of fringing, perhaps? Life goes on.’
Indeed it does. God, but it was good to have Stella back in her life.
Matthew next. A man who telephoned so regularly wasn’t thinking of abandoning her, was he? And after what Stella has just told me about the way he looked at me … oh yes, Matthew next. But only when she was ready.
Chapter Twenty-Six
APRIL 1928
Emma gave birth to a daughter – a little earlier than expected – on Sunday, April 15th at 2.37 a.m. in the cottage hospital in Paignton.
‘The child that is born on the Sabbath day, is bonnie and blithe and good and gay,’ the sister midwife quoted. ‘And I don’t know when I’ve been at an easier birth than that, Mrs Jago.’
‘Nor me.’ Emma laughed. ‘For which something tells me I must be grateful.’
Ruby had told her all sorts of horror stories about pain and discomfort and how your baby can embarrass you before he or she is born in all sorts of ways but none of it applied to Emma.
‘She’s a good weight,’ the midwife said. She had Emma’s daughter in a cotton sling suspended from a chain on top of which was a measure. ‘Six pounds, twelve ounces. Ten fingers, ten toes. Heartbeat’s good and strong and …’ The baby yelled then, long and loud. ‘And a good set of lungs on her. And the longest legs I think I’ve ever seen on a newborn.’
The midwife finished her weighing, wrapped the baby in
a gauze cloth, then a cotton blanket, and handed her to Emma. A nurse in the room bustled about clearing away the waxed paper that had been on the delivery bed and tipping away jugs of water that hadn’t been used.
‘It’s a changing world she’s been born into,’ the midwife said. ‘Did you see in the newspapers that two Frenchmen have flown around the world?’
‘No,’ Emma said. ‘I was a bit too occupied to be reading newspapers. I hadn’t got a thing ready for little miss here, and she caught me by surprise.’
But if men had flown around the world it wouldn’t be long before aeroplanes were going back and forth across the Atlantic and she would be on one of them, with her baby, to visit Fleur just as soon as she could.
‘That’s daughters for you,’ the midwife said, taking a thermometer from her breast pocket and giving it a shake. ‘Temperature.’ She held it out towards Emma, and Emma accepted it in the corner of her cheek, holding it under her tongue. And while she waited the required time for there to be a reading, Emma gazed at her daughter. What else was there to do? Could there be anything better to do at that moment?
‘Amazingly perfect,’ the midwife said. ‘I only hope life for you and this little one goes on as well as it has started. Doctor Grenier tells me you are, er, alone with this child.’
‘For the moment. But alone isn’t lonely, sister. I have friends. Good friends.’
Who don’t judge me, she could have added, but didn’t. Yes, a few of her clients had stopped their custom once they’d discovered Emma was a widow and pregnant, but there would be new ones coming along before too long, she was sure of it.
‘Good. We all need those.’
The midwife left Emma and her daughter alone then – another mother had gone into labour and her services were required. Two nurses came in after a few moments and helped her into a wheelchair and a porter came and wheeled Emma, her baby in her arms, back to a side ward. A private room.
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